First of all, before starting, I want to make clear that the stuff I am about to mention is not the end of GTM. Read the whole thing (I say that because I know there will be fools who don't read the entire thing and will be like oOHh mAhH gODd gTM iS cLOsInG... no we are not..). And remember, no matter what happens, GTM will stand and continue to thrive. And that is because our community is loyal and loves GTM. Some of you have been around for literally almost a decade. And there is nothing the crooks at the Mojang head office can cook up to change that. Anyways, let's get into it. Around two and a half weeks ago, we received the following email from Mojang's Enforcement Team (the guys who enforce Minecraft's EULA). This message came as a shock to everyone (including other gun server owners whom we reached out to for support). We replied to Mojang making the following points (thank you to the other server owners who helped us come up with some of these points by the way): It is incredibly unfair that Mojang can wipe off servers that have been up and running for decades, sometimes on a whimsical "recent directive." Gun servers have been allowed to operate under the EULA for years, and now to suddenly "reinterpret" it is straight-on tyrannical (we worded it more nicely in our reply). Their reinterpretation will harm hundreds of communities and millions of players that make them up. Minecraft itself has BOMBS (TNT), Gunpower, Suicide Bombers (Creepers), Crossbows (considered a 'firearm' by most jurisdictions), Swords, etc Both Mojang-endorsed servers and Mojang-endorsed "DLCs" on the Minecraft marketplace have firearms. One example is Mineplex which even shows up as a recommended server on Bedrock. So it's so unfair to start by targeting us first? Games like Fortnite and Roblox that are widely considered as OK for "kids" are more explicit weapons (compared to our blocky-pixelated gun models). You can read the full response letter in an attachment to this post [HERE]. We received this response in reply (conveniently ignoring half of our points): Since their reply did not properly establish where they were trying the line between what was considered "not OK" (as opposed to say TNT), we replied again to them asking them if it would be appropriate to rebrand our guns as "airsoft" by adding an orange tip like so. Here is what they responded: Their message suggested they didn't fully read what we asked, but now, at least finally, we have some concrete changes we can start making. A lot of people have been confused the heck out of this "recent directive," too. They, too, like us, are in utter disbelief that Mojang can do something as idiotic as this. It's probably for this reason; many people seeing this are like, "It's fake." I assure you. It's not. Having had our server blacklisted by the EULA before (and as other server owners, I'm sure, would know too), the email, [email protected], is indeed legit. For the past week, we have been deliberating new names for our guns. Honestly, Mojang's still been pretty unclear about what they want. And at this point, we don't fully know what's going to happen. We will begin by first trying to rename all guns so they don't sound like "real-life guns." As one server owner put it, even this is "bastardizing" our game. If Mojang still needs more, we will try adding those orange tips to all guns. And if that doesn't work, we will probably have to retexture guns to be more like "fANtASy bLAstERs" (which apparently is confirmed to be OK at least until the geniuses at Mojang come up with another "new directive"). Even in this worst case, we will release a public version of our current resource pack, probably over Discord or forums, to be applied as an overlay so players who prefer the current pack can continue to play the game as is while still allowing us to comply. We were actually not even planning on not telling the community until we knew more (so as not to confuse everyone with a long and confusing post like this). But it seems some of the other server owners we reached out to thought it best to try to fight this "new directive" more publically, so the word has gotten out. So at this point, it's better if we encourage our community to take to social media and fight this whimsical "new directive." So please, help us. Many of your favorite games on other servers that might happen to have reference to guns might be wiped away or "bastardized" into something just worst. So I encourage all of you to fight this. Take to Reddit. Take to TikTok. Take to Twitter. Take to Minecraft's Discord. Email Microsoft. Upvote comments against this change on social media. Appeal to them that this is not a healthy change. And it's straight of unfair. Nothing changes things like a loyal community like ours. We encourage GTM's community and other server communities to fight this because this affects us all. If you are a server owner for a gun server like us, reach out to me over Discord: SkylixMC#7774 (you must join our discord to message me). We have a group chat just for server owners to help us coordinate our next move because we are all f***ed. It's better to pool our resources to determine how best to respond. P.S. Don't ask the staff for more information about this. They don't know. We don't know. We've told you everything we do know here. And any updates we do have, we will also post them here.
[Update 1: 5/31/23] There have been a few requests to see the headers of the emails we received so skeptics can verify for themselves that the email is legit. So here it is: Spoiler: Open Image We've received a lot of attention from Youtubers, server owners, and other people outside this community. Therefore, I think it's worth mentioning this is not the first time we have had troubles with Mojang's enforcement team (hence the title: Mojang Strikes "Again"). We were actually temporarily blacklisted in the past for other reasons, including gambling (we used to have a casino) and alleged P2W gameplay. Not once was "guns and firearms" mentioned as an area of concern. The owner of Yom Network, who has also been through a EULA review in the past, also confirmed that "guns and firearms" were never mentioned. After we addressed all issues mentioned by the enforcement team, we were unblacklisted and confirmed to be compliant with all regulations. Since then we have done our best to remain compliant. Here is the email we received on Nov 1st, 2022 confirming we were compliant at the time: Spoiler: View Image When we were unblacklisted at that time, the BlockedServers Twitter bot also picked this up: https://twitter.com/BlockedServers/status/1587511823166836736?s=20 Spoiler: View Image (Both IPs belong to GTM) The point I am making is that this is indeed a recent change. The reason I mention this will become apparent in the next section, where a Mojang support representative claimed "guns... have never been approved". This is simply not true. Take this section with a grain of salt because this is partially speculation. The owner of another Minecraft gun server sent an email to Mojang asking about the change. In the conversation, the Mojang representative says that guns in Minecraft have "never been approved". This was probably just an honest mistake, but as discussed in the previous section, this is clearly false. However, based on the content of Mojang's reply, the good news is that Mojang indicated that they willing to have a discussion with us regarding this. Said owner also asked a few additional questions regarding the scope of this ban (particularly about where they are drawing the line between what they consider "realistic" weapons and whether they would permit "age-gating" as a compromise). The Mojang representative responded that "key" members are currently not in office and, in fact, won't be for another month. Consequently they don't have an answer for us at this time. So it will be at least a month before we know more. GTM asked similar questions as said owner regarding this gun ban in its reply to Mojang Enforcement, but given this, we also don't expect to get a reply before next month. Said owner requested us not to publicize the exact content of the conversation yet; therefore, I've omitted screenshots of this conversation, but I still thought it was important to keep you all updated. This conversation also reminded me of a conversation @Presidentx had with a discord user named IP_Justice, who is a part of Mojang's enforcement team (which I forgot to include in the original post). This conversation happened around the same time as when we received that original email 2+ weeks ago. Spoiler: View Conversation Here we have two instances of a Mojang representative claiming that no guidelines have changed. It is possible that the "gun ban" was a simple miscommunication between EULA Enforcement officers (we are praying it is). This theory is supported by the fact that Mojang representatives we have reached were not aware of any "recent directive," including enforcement team officer IP_Justice. However, I admit this is more likely to be wishful thinking on my end. We have not heard back from IP_Justice yet (and again, based on that other conversation, we may not until next month). Over the past few days, we have seen massive support for GTM and other gun servers from all over the Minecraft community. As of writing this post, at least a million individuals have heard about this incident from Youtube videos, Social Media, Media Coverage, other discords, and more. We are honestly grateful to everyone for their support. Spoiler: View Content Thank you to all you amazing people for standing up for us and reporting this issue!! Twitter: Https://twitter.com/TheMisterEpicYT/status/1663425278851559424 News: https://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/bans-guns https://sea.ign.com/minecraft/19980...y-banning-guns-as-gta-themed-servers-run-wild https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/minecraft-guns-gta-grand-theft-auto-server/ https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/minecraft-geht-gegen-schusswaffen-vor,3395012.html Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ejMkg3Wzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPjFy8Q_-48 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1834058554 It is incredibly unfair to us, and the many other communities like us of gun-servers, mod-makers, and plugin-makers, to have a sudden reinterpretation of the Minecraft EULA jeopardies something we have invested years and, in some cases, DECADES on. GTM itself has been operating since 2015. Dear Mojang, if you are reading this, please reconsider. Currently, Minecraft has a wide appeal to people of all ages. But with this recent change, you are alienating an important demographic of teens and young adults that made Minecraft what it is. Many other comparable games have been long held to be acceptable for children. Minecraft guns like on GTM have unrealistic graphics and little to no gore, which is in fact, milder than these comparable games! I personally actually completely understood (and, in fact, supported) the ban on Gambling, Drugs, and other vices across Minecraft servers. But common', guns? You are going too far. You are bringing political baggage into a block game. You repeatedly tell us in your "EULA" to "not harm the brand." If you suddenly set a precedent to suddenly reinterpret your EULA, do you think that benefits the brand or harms it? Do you think future servers, map makers, resource pack makers, and mod-makers would be more inclined to continue to make interesting content for Minecraft, knowing that another reinterpretation can wipe them away at any time? Mojang, is this really what you want?
Wow at this point they are just trying to take down the server with them removing crowbars from the store and rank cheatcodes from ranks and now they are trying to remove the guns they just keep coming up with new things to hurt Gtm
What about Hypixel though... They literally have so many game modes with guns and it's the biggest server in Minecraft. Doubt the player base will be happy when Mojang tries to attack them.